TOP 19 PRODUCTIVITY HACKS FOR DESKTOP JOBS

Reading time: 10min

This article on Productivity Hacks for Desktop Jobs helps you get your work done much faster! I’ve used them myself and found them very helpful throughout my career. Sometimes I wonder, why you don’t find more of these practical tips on the internet. You usually find generic advice out there. 

You deserve to go far in your career. Use these productivity hacks to gain more time and focus on your better professional development!

The points are in no specific order.

“You have to do stuff that average people don’t understand because those are the only good things” – Andy Warhol (American Artist, Filmmaker, Publisher)

1. Visualize Your Day

Use your imagination for a minute or write down how you imagine your day. Just picture it, but in a way that you like. No scary, stressful and melodramatic negativity. Think of an ideal day. This will get you in a better mood and you start off motivated.

But keep it fun, always walk openly through the day, with no expectations. Example: Visualize how you have a first success moment in the morning, have lunch with a colleague where you learn something interesting and you finish your work at 5pm and walk home.

2. Day Planning

Make a written plan for the day and work it off. Written plans have a certain binding nature: they create a sense of commitment. Once you’ve written down the task, there’s no discussion with yourself whether you need to do it or not. It’s on the list, so… Next, you put a duration to each task.

“You need as much time for a task as you reserved for it” is a rule in time management. Think about it…

3. Delegate, Outsource, Automate

Before you start a task you consider whether YOU have to do it or it could be delegated or outsourced. If you must do it, consider whether it can be automated (Use of Makros, Robotic Process Automation, Use of AI, you name it…).

Delegate, outsource or automate as much as possible. However, pay attention when using automation costs you more time in terms of learning to automate it. It only gives you a return when these tasks are done repeatedly, so you learn it once and then you don’t have to learn how to automate it each time.

4. Kill Fear, Get Stuff Done Directly

Many tasks only become unpleasant or difficult when they are not done immediately. Thinking about it too much will get you in the procrastination mode. Additionally, you’ll get even more uncomfortable or afraid when you wait too long.

What is it in your case? An important call, a deciding personal talk to someone? Also read tip no. 12 that is strongly related!

5. Screen Stuff, Before You Act

Maybe you’ve made the experience in a virtual data room or when you received tons of files via email: how do you process the data or information? How do you filter the relevant parts of it for your actual work?

The key is to get an overview and screen everything in order to evaluate the relevance of each informational piece. So, screen stuff, and only then download, archive or structure it. Advantages are:

• you then know the right source to refer to, 
• you don’t get confused and overwhelmed by all the data, 
• you don’t make the mistake of using something which was not the right data/source to use. I have often made this mistake and then had to begin my work again with the updated data/information…
• you know how and where to save it, which structure fits best, etc. because you know the content and 
• you can name the files depending on your screening. 

6. Make Best Use of 2 Monitors

Using a second monitor mainly helps you with comparing stuff and linking for Excel formulas. The function in MS Office under “View” and “New Window” will get you a second window of the same file you are in (e.g. Excel, Power Point or Word).

I use it mostly to compare and edit content or to link cells more easily in an Excel Worksheet. Close the second window after the activity as otherwise you’ll save a version where the next person opening the file might get confused with two or more windows. 😉

7. Quality Check habits

You can save messy re-work or review time with quality checks. I’ve found it helpful to build habits of quality checking in order to not find out during or at the end of long or even communicated calculations that something was wrong. And it happens more often than you might think.

Examples: make a habit of number checks when you get raw data and you do an analysis with them. In finance, you make checks of e.g. the balance sheet (both sides should be equal) or subtract the profit displayed in your table from the profit in the original source (the difference should be zero).

Another classic quality check is that you review your output, before you send or show it to someone. Read over your Power point slides, your text or whatever. You’ll find typos, wrong contexts, missing standards, etc). Make a habit of checking your output.

8. Avoid Distractions

We do not speak of a sorted desk here. Nowadays the big distractions at work are smartphones, earphones or open space office loudness.

Define rules for the use of your smartphone at work, e.g. specific times/breaks for it or in general work on your smartphone screen time habits.

Earphones are tricky: music or spoken content like podcasts might motivate you but only maintain your productivity if and only if you do “stupid” work. By that I mean work where you do not have to think, interpret or read. If you do work where you have to think, interpret or read, avoid earphones at all cost!

Open Space offices can be disturbing at first. Some get used to it. Others purposely find themselves focus rooms, where to work in concentration mode. The disadvantage is that you are cut off from your colleagues or boss which for small teams helps to be better informed (small teams often organize very informally).

Therefore, find out which type of work can be done in open space and which one’s really need your fullest attention and speed. For focus and speed work in focus areas/rooms when necessary.

9. Use Written Stopping Points

Before you leave your working environment you write down at which activity you stopped working. You also write down the next 1-3 necessary tasks or steps. When you come back to work the next day you immediately know what to do, you don’t lose time familiarizing yourself again and get back into the flow much faster.

This is a great way to stop working while you are in the middle of some deep work. Oftentimes people stay longer to finish something and do not find a good stopping point. With this technique you find it easier to „jump off“. And it only costs you 5 minutes that you need to consider at the end of your work day.

10. Make AI a routine

Use AI more regularly. It turns out that it becomes more and more of a habit when you use it more often and it actually saves you time. Why? Instead of a search engine like Google, Bing, Ecosia, etc. the AI gets you far more accurate and direct results for what you want to know.

With search engines, you need to screen several pages to find want you are really looking for. When you ask ChatGPT you formulate a well written prompt. When you want to make sure it’s not hallucinating you ask for the source, if this is important for your work.

So, replace search engines with AI, make it a routine. Saves you tons of time for research work. Other fields where you can apply AI, just to name a few:

• Automate routine tasks (scrips, RPA, chatbots), 
• Data analysis (Tableau, Power BI, …), 
• Simplify writing process (Grammarly, AI writing assistants), 
• Taking meeting notes (AI meeting assistants), 
• Idea generation/brainstorming, 
• Design assistance (Canva, Figma, …)
• AI calendar management (smart calendar and scheduling tools)

11. At first, be good, but not perfect

At first, make a draft, a “MVP” (Minimal viable product) and get feedback on your work. However, anticipate what’s important for your internal customer (e.g. your boss) or external customer.

Read the blog post on effectiveness vs efficiency to get a deeper understanding on this and you will look at your daily work from a completely different angle! Still, you can incorporate tip no. 7 and do necessary quality checks before you deliver this first draft.

12. Practice Making Decisions

To be faster often means just to begin. Of course you plan how you approach a task, but sometimes it’s important to make the decision to just start quickly. Questions will arise during the process and you will address them.

When you practice making more decisions in general, you’ll avoid the trap of procrastinating and overthinking. So, do practice decision making quickly, especially for smaller tasks. Archive or delete? Delegate or do it myself? Make that call now or later? Do it now! Overcome your first hesitations. 

13. Motivate Yourself

This can be easily done in moments, where you commute, walk or do sports. You can motivate yourself with e.g. music, affirmations or you visualize your goals regularly. But still, it can happen that you are unmotivated. That’s just normal. If you have a longer period with no motivation, ask yourself: what are the reasons? Here are the most common reasons: 

• Problems with supervisors, colleagues? 
• Current job is not satisfying (under-/overchallend, appropriate remuneration), 
• Private problems that suck your concentration and energy
• Health and/or Nutrition issues – are you physically inactive, have the wrong nutrition for your body in its current situation?

14. Clean Your Workspace

Don‘t leave too many items on your desk. Only those that you use daily are meant to be there. Have things easy to find. Have your mobile phone somewhere on the side out of your visual sphere, so you don‘t get distracted by pop ups.

The less you have on your desk, the less your brain is occupied with things that are not important right now. Get your things their own place, and I also mean digitally (like folder structures).

High performance can obly be achieved when you are not interrupted all the time by looking for something. A clean workspace on your desk and in your digital workspace (Browser, desktop, folder structures, project management tools and software etc) enables you to have more of a flow in your daily work!

15. Use Keyboard Shortcuts and Add-Ins

Especially if you regularly work with MS Excel or MS Powerpoint. If you are interested, I can give you tons of shortcuts and tricks. Please use this form and contact me if you are interested. When enough people signal interest, I will create a comprehensive guide on that topic.

16. Use Productivity Tools and Methods

When you organize yourself better, you gain tons of time. You suddenly procrastinate less if you use productivity tools and methods. Read the blog post about Achievement Plans to perfectly plan your week and learn how to stick to it.

Also use digital tools like “Evernote” that makes all notes searchable (even text in pictures in your notes). Use “Trello” or “Asana” to keep track of the tiny things in your daily life.

Here’s how you learn to take huge advantage of trello combined with my To-Do list system. Clearly some have experiences with different tools. Let me know in the comments, which tools you use. There are plenty of options out there!

17. Self-discipline

There are certain areas, where self-discipline grows your overall productivity in the long run. The first is “cash flow-management”: if you still need to raise your income to the point where you no longer have to worry about whether you’ll have enough money in your account at the end of the month, a disciplined budget plan will help you.

Monitor and cut your costs, where possible and watch out for more income streams. I created such a plan and from several money seminars and different sources over time I added key performance indicators to see whether I am on track with my cash management or not.

The discipline here will help you see where your time and efforts can be directed in order to gain more financial freedom. Next, self-discipline is important for leadership, especially for your self-leadership. Lead yourself effectively!

How do you manage your time? Do you have achievement plans to be more effective? Do you have principles on how to get the most return on your time? Read this blog post on basic principles that change the way you think about “your” time.

If you internalize these principles and follow them, you’ll be able to get even more out of your time. Warren Buffet once said:

“The rich invest in time, the poor invest in money.”

18. Connect

Have lunch with different colleagues, get a coffee with someone. Be curious about their topics and interests. They might be longer in the company and you can learn from them.

Maybe you even prepare the talk by thinking about how you can help that person. Or later you realize this person might know something you don’t or which resource he/she has that you don’t or how he/she can help you with something.

Give and take, be friendly all the time and create Win-win situations. This is a real career and time boost!

19. Cognitive performance

This one is huge. I’ve been experimenting and reading about it since 2008. How you get your brain to be in top form? Only to mention a few keywords here: sleep habits, eating habits and nutrition, health, movement and sports, mindfulness and spirituality.

If you are interested, please comment and I will move forward a blog post on this topic. Subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss it.

If you pay attention to your body and you find out what works well for your wellbeing – combining it with self-discipline – then this will boost your productivity to the moon! 😉

What are your productivity hacks at desktop jobs? Comment below!